The Mill, with studios in London and N.Y., has re-launched Mill Film, an artist-led shop creating high end film visual effects for the movie industry. The Mill’s work in television over the past few years has centred on creating work of enormous complexity very quickly. The team is now extending this commitment to features via Mill Film. The Mill’s TV and film studio currently employs 60 staff and expects to expand in the near future. Roma O’Connor recently joined as head of production. She is one of London’s leading senior visual effects producers with over 13 years experience in the industry. In her role as director/executive producer at former CIS/Rainmaker, London, her recent credits include The Watchman, Slumdog Millionaire, Tropic Thunder and The Duchess…..Proton, New York, has added editors Nathan Petty, Edward Feldman and Erik “EJ” Johnson. Petty’s past roosts include now defunct agency Goldberg Moser O’Neill in San Francisco where he served as senior editor, and later S.F. postproduction houses Umlaut Films and Spy Post. Feldman was at the former Bob N’ Sheila’s Edit World, San Francisco, and then Umlaut. He also diversified into directing. And Johnson has held posts at such shops as Crew Cuts, MacKenzie Cutler and Mad River Post….Computer-generated character animation and visual effects studio SpeakeasyFX in Westfield, N.J., has added executive producer Sally Anne Syberg, animation director Jan Carlée and art director/designer David Michael Friend. SpeakeasyFX is headed by owner/executive director Scott Stewart…..
Review: Director Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” Starring Robert Pattinson
So you think YOUR job is bad?
Sorry if we seem to be lacking empathy here. But however crummy you think your 9-5 routine is, it'll never be as bad as Robert Pattinson's in Bong Joon Ho's "Mickey 17" — nor will any job, on Earth or any planet, approach this level of misery.
Mickey, you see, is an "Expendable," and by this we don't mean he's a cast member in yet another sequel to Sylvester Stallone's tired band of mercenaries ("Expend17ables"?). No, even worse! He's literally expendable, in that his job description requires that he die, over and over, in the worst possible ways, only to be "reprinted" once again as the next Mickey.
And from here stems the good news, besides the excellent Pattinson, whom we hope got hazard pay, about Bong's hotly anticipated follow-up to "Parasite." There's creativity to spare, and much of it surrounds the ways he finds for his lead character to expire — again and again.
The bad news, besides, well, all the death, is that much of this film devolves into narrative chaos, bloat and excess. In so many ways, the always inventive Bong just doesn't know where to stop. It hardly seems a surprise that the sci-fi novel, by Edward Ashton, he's adapting here is called "Mickey7" — Bong decided to add 10 more Mickeys.
The first act, though, is crackling. We begin with Mickey lying alone at the bottom of a crevasse, having barely survived a fall. It is the year 2058, and he's part of a colonizing expedition from Earth to a far-off planet. He's surely about to die. In fact, the outcome is so expected that his friend Timo (Steven Yeun), staring down the crevasse, asks casually: "Haven't you died yet?"
How did Mickey get here? We flash back to Earth, where Mickey and Timo ran afoul of a villainous loan... Read More